The Hanseatic League

Published: Feb. 29, 2024, 10:15 a.m.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hanseatic League or Hansa which dominated North European trade in the medieval period. With a trading network that stretched from Iceland to Novgorod via London and Bruges, these German-speaking Hansa merchants benefitted from tax exemptions and monopolies. Over time, the Hansa became immensely influential as rulers felt the need to treat it well. Kings and princes sometimes relied on loans from the Hansa to finance their wars and an embargo by the Hansa could lead to famine. Eventually, though, the Hansa went into decline with the rise in the nation state\\u2019s power, greater competition from other merchants and the development of trade across the Atlantic.

With

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz \\nAssociate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam

Georg Christ\\nSenior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester

And

Sheilagh Ogilvie \\nChichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, University of Oxford

Producer: Victoria Brignell

Reading list:

James S. Amelang and Siegfried Beer, Public Power in Europe: Studies in Historical Transformations (Plus-Pisa University Press, 2006), especially `Trade and Politics in the Medieval Baltic: English Merchants and England\\u2019s Relations to the Hanseatic League 1370\\u20131437`

Nicholas R. Amor, Late Medieval Ipswich: Trade and Industry (Boydell & Brewer, 2011)

B. Ayers, The German Ocean: Medieval Europe around the North Sea (Equinox, 2016)

H. Brand and P. Brood, The German Hanse in Past & Present Europe: A medieval league as a model for modern interregional cooperation? (Castel International Publishers, 2007)

Wendy R. Childs, The Trade and Shipping of Hull, 1300-1500 (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1990)

Alexander Cowan, Hanseatic League: Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa (Macmillan, 1970)

John D. Fudge, Cargoes, Embargoes and Emissaries: The Commercial and Political Interaction of England and the German Hanse, 1450-1510 (University of Toronto Press, 1995)

Donald J. Harreld, A Companion to the Hanseatic League (Brill, 2015)

T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157 \\u2013 1611: A Study of their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (first published 1991; Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Giampiero Nigro (ed.), Maritime networks as a factor in European integration (Fondazione Istituto Internazionale Di Storia Economica \\u201cF. Datini\\u201d Prato, University of Firenze, 2019), especially \\u2018Maritime Networks and Premodern Conflict Management on Multiple Levels. The Example of Danzig and the Giese Family\\u2019 by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Paul Richards (ed.), Six Essays in Hanseatic History (Poppyland Publishing, 2017)

Paul Richards, King\\u2019s Lynn and The German Hanse 1250-1550: A Study in Anglo-German Medieval Trade and Politics (Poppyland Publishing, 2022)

Stephen H. Rigby, The Overseas Trade of Boston, 1279-1548 (B\\xf6hlau Verlag, 2023)

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks (eds.), The Hanse in Medieval & Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2012) \\n \\nJustyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, \\u2018The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management\\u2019 (Continuity and Change 32/1, Cambridge University Press, 2017)

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